Diagnostic uncertainty: dichotomies are not the answer.

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

Who cites it

11 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

1. Defining and Measuring Diagnostic Uncertainty in Medicine: A Systematic Review.Journal of general internal medicine · 2018
   Pooled it
2. Managing diagnostic uncertainty in primary care: a systematic critical review.BMC family practice · 2017
   Pooled it
3. How decontextualised risk information affects clinicians' understanding of risk and uncertainty in primary care diagnosis: a qualitative study of clinical vignettes.BJGP open · 2025
   Article
4. Diagnostic performance and clinical utility of metagenomic next-generation sequencing in suspected central nervous system infections: a prospective comparative study.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025
   Article
5. Clinical Uncertainty Influences Antibiotic Prescribing for Upper Respiratory Tract Infections: A Qualitative Study of Township Hospital Physicians and Village Doctors in Rural Shandong Province, China.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023
   Article
6. Primary care practice and cancer suspicion during the first three COVID-19 lockdowns in the UK: a qualitative study.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2022
   Article
7. Diagnostic potential of simplified methods for measuring glomerular filtration rate to detect chronic kidney disease in dogs.Journal of veterinary internal medicine · 2019
   Article
8. Primary care chaplaincy: an intervention for complex presentation.Primary health care research & development · 2018
   Article
9. The Clinical Relevance of Methods for Handling Inconclusive Medical Test Results: Quantification of Uncertainty in Medical Decision-Making and Screening.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018
   Review
10. Qualitative study of primary care clinicians' views on point-of-care testing for C-reactive protein for acute respiratory tract infections in family medicine.BMJ open · 2017
    Article
11. Interval of Uncertainty: An Alternative Approach for the Determination of Decision Thresholds, with an Illustrative Application for the Prediction of Prostate Cancer.PloS one · 2016
    Article

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

Abstract

PubMed holds no abstract for this paper.

Indexed as